English Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Jonathan Bate

Description

A renowned critic, biographer, and Shakespeare scholar, Jonathan Bate provides in this Very Short Introduction a lively and engaging overview of the literature that Jorge Luis Borges called "the richest in the world." From the medieval "Hymn of Caedmon" to George Orwell's "Why I Write," from Jane Austen to Ian McEwan, and from Winnie the Pooh to Dr. Johnson, this brilliant, compact survey stretches across the centuries, exploring the major literary forms (poetry, novel, drama, essay and more), the many histories and theories of the very idea of literature, and the role of writers in shaping English, British, and post-imperial identities. Bate illuminates the work of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, and many other major figures of English literature. He looks at the Renaissance, Romanticism, and Modernism, at the birth of the novel and the Elizabethan invention of the idea of a national literature, and at the nature of writing itself. Ranging from children's literature to biography, this is an indispensable guide and an inspiration for anyone interested in England's magnificent literary heritage.

English Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Jonathan Bate

Author Information

Jonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. A best-selling author and an authority on Shakespeare, he is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

English Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Jonathan Bate

Reading Guide

English Literature: A Very Short Introduction discusses why literature matters, how narrative works, and what is distinctly English about English literature. Jonathan Bate considers how we determine the content of the field, and looks at the three major kinds of imaginative literature - English poetry, English drama and The English novel.

Questions for Thought and Discussion

What are some of the ways in which our senses of national and perhaps local identity have been shaped by literature?

What have been the key texts for creating our images of Britain? Jane Austen for our idea of village life, Dickens for London, Hardy for rural England...?

How long does a literary work have to go on being read for it to become a ‘classic’?

Which contemporary works of fiction do you think will still be read in a hundred years time?

Do works of children’s literature date more quickly than adult ones?

Is it useful to make a distinction between ‘popular’ literary genres – detective story, science fiction, spy thriller, chick lit – and the ‘literary’ novel?

What should the limits be to our definition of literature? What sort of literary qualities can we find in non-fictional genres such as the essay, the travel book, the history book, even the work of political theory or natural history?

Is our sense of the role of poetry now confined to the private sphere (love poetry, nature poetry, the poetry of personal memory) whereas it used to be a more public form (political poetry, satire, war poetry)?

Is the time coming when we will need to read Chaucer, Shakespeare, and even Milton in modern “translations”?

Is there a tension between seeing Shakespeare’s plays in performance and reading them as literature?

Do you agree that playwrights in Britain since Shakespeare seem to have been more successful in comedy than tragedy?

Should we worry about the ‘national’ origins of works of literature? Are there particular tensions between English and Irish/Scottish literature?

And what about the literature of the former colonies and of immigrants? Should that be read through the spectacles of imperialism or do we need to move on?

In a globalized world, will the very idea of a national literature become redundant?

Other books by Jonathan Bate

Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)